How a running back falls might not seem like the most obvious measure of his effectiveness. His goal, after all, is to not get tackled.

But when Jets running backs coach Anthony Lynn analyzes his players, he watches how they finish runs. This often indicates how well they began the play. When a running back finishes a run correctly, he falls at an angle that lets Lynn know he did not hesitate while hitting the hole created by his offensive line.

"When a running back is decisive, he normally finishes falling forward," Lynn said. "When a running back is indecisive, is when he gets knocked back or falls sideways."

This decisiveness — the unwillingness to second-guess any move, on the field or off it — is the biggest reason Bilal Powell is blossoming this season.

Powell, whom the Jets drafted in the fourth round in 2011, got his most prominent opportunity to show his progress in last Sunday’s victory over Buffalo. Powell and Chris Ivory split carries in the first two games — 25 for Powell, 22 for Ivory — but when Ivory left the Bills game with a hamstring injury after four carries, Powell finished by showing how convincingly he finishes.

Powell totaled 27 carries for 149 yards, surpassing his previous career highs of 19 and 78. In the second half, he ran 17 times for 109 yards, including gains of 13, 14, 21 and 27. Of his 149 yards, 83 came after contact. His 114 yards after contact for the season rank 10th in the NFL, according to ProFootballFocus.com.

Being decisive with his initial cut has been Powell’s most significant improvement since he entered the NFL, he said. He will get another chance to showcase his progress tomorrow when the Jets play at Tennessee because Ivory is out with his hamstring injury.

Right guard Willie Colon called it "an attitude thing" and said that even though Powell isn’t the Jets’ biggest running back — at 204 pounds, he is 18 pounds lighter than Ivory — he finishes runs better than any of them. That’s largely because Powell "kind of has a knack for knowing where the hole is going to be," Colon said.

It is more than knack, though that helps. Part of finishing is, as Powell said, "just getting my shoulders down, leverage, and just being dedicated to whatever cut that I make."

But much of finishing starts well before the game begins. Lynn liked Powell’s lower-body strength when he joined the Jets — an attribute for plowing into defenders at the end of a run. Powell wasn’t always so decisive with his cuts, though. Lynn spent hours with him studying film so Powell could understand "run reads" — how to recognize pre-snap shifts in defensive fronts, or post-snap creases between offensive linemen.

Now, Lynn said, "He knows where the hole is going to be a lot of times before he even gets the ball."

Powell, who carried 110 times for 437 yards in 2012, didn’t know what role he might have this season. When Shonn Greene left for Tennessee in free agency after last season, the Jets signed Ivory and Mike Goodson, whose four-game suspension for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy ends after this week’s game. Powell said he reacted to the signings by focusing only on his own offseason preparation.

The Jets will eventually need Ivory and/or Goodson, because NFL running backs do not carry 27 times a game over a long haul. Last year, just three backs averaged 20-plus carries per game, with the leader at 21.9. From 2007-11, the number of 20-carry backs were four, four, four, six and two. Nobody averaged more than 23.5. Gone, seemingly, are the days of 26 carries per game, the high mark in 2006. From 2000-06, 20-carry backs were more common — with eight, seven, seven, 12, 12, 11 and nine in each of those years.

Powell, 24, said he felt "a little sore" Monday after playing 68 snaps. Still, Lynn was impressed with his stamina late in the game. Lynn still wants to see Powell improve his route-running and upper-body strength, but based on what Lynn saw as Sunday’s game wound down, he has no problem with how Powell finishes.

"You could tell the game was starting to slow down for him," Lynn said. "Because he was finding holes that he didn’t find in the first half."